Leagoo S8 Review

Leagoo sends his interpretation of another clone of the Samsung Galaxy S8 in the race to win a few market shares for themselves. Shortly ago we introduced you to the Homtom S8 and the Blackview S8, which also wanted to take a piece of the cake. Both gave a passable result. Whether the Leagoo S8 is as good or even better than its predecessors, this review will tell you.

Design

Leagoo has a big ride and probably has a little money in hand and is sponsoring the London Premier League Club Tottenham Hotspur. Calling up the associated website of Leagoo S8, the currently best striker in England, Harry Kane, appears in the dress of said club. Maybe the good one watched a bit too much ZDF, because “with the second you can see better”. Otherwise, as usual, all the specifications of the device and its advantages are represented by large images. So the loading of the homepage with bad connection can take already a few seconds. Web design is definitely not one of the strengths of the Chinese.

Leagoo praises his offspring with ” Unstoppable Fullscreen “. Probably a clear indication of the almost borderless display, which comes along with an aspect ratio of 18: 9. The S8 is available in the “overwhelming” colors “Dazzle Black” and “Dazzle Blue”. The competitor of Homtom can have in direct comparison whole 4 colors. However, the aluminum unibody is matt lacquered on Leagoo. This is a nice contrast to the back cover, which, like the Homtom S8, consists of highly reflective polycarbonate. If you keep the Homtom and the Leagoo S8 side by side, you will not notice a difference at first glance.

Just like the homtome, the Leagoo S8 also looks good visually. On the similarity to the original Galaxy S8 I do not go further now. Here, the name speaks for itself.

Processing

The phone is very good with its weight of 185g in the hand; even with prolonged use. The power button and the volume control can be found on the right side. The left side remains free of any buttons or SIM tray. The latter is located on the right side of the top of the case. On the bottom there is the left 3.5mm jack and the center of the USB port. Each left and right of it are 4 holes each. Since it is a mono loudspeaker, the sound comes from one side only.

On the top of the display, to our astonishment, in addition to a front LED flash, there is also a dual front camera. I will come to quality and benefits later. On the back are the dual LED flash above and below the dual camera. Last but not least, we have the rather small fingerprint sensor, which was designed rectangular. One might think that persons with very large fingers could have slight problems with unlocking. However, this is pure speculation, since it works well with me.

Delivery

One thing, however, makes Galaxy Clones better than Samsung, in my opinion: they place the fingerprint in the middle of the main camera and not next to it . The back cover is very slippery and you are constantly removing your fingerprints unless you use the included silicone sleeve. Speaking of the scope of delivery: To our delight, it is quite generous. In the beautifully designed packaging, the buyer can expect a screen protector and the TPU silicone bumpers in addition to the charger and ribbon cable. Even in-ear headphones of better quality are included.

Display

The Leagoo S8 has, like the Homtom S8, a 5.7 “IPS display with an aspect ratio of 18: 9 . However, what makes Leagoo a bit better with her version is the “edgless” design of the touchscreen. Certainly, the Homtom also uses 2.5D glass, but the display edges are even more rounded than the direct competitor . As a result, the display of the Leagoo S8 looks a bit “borderless”. According to the manufacturer, we are dealing with a screen-to-body ration of 85% . The user should not have to worry about scratches since Gorilla Glass 4 is used here as well. Regrettably, there are no positive news on the number of pixels on the LCD. Since the S8 Leagoo dissolves only in HD (720 x 1440), we also come here only on a meager 282 PPI . Thus, it is not surprising that there are hardly any differences to the homtome.

The overview of all open tabs is just as fuzzy, or pixelated, as in the S8 of Homtom. Similar things can be said about viewing angle stability. When tilting the smartphone display contents get a similar yellow tinge, even if it turns out a little lower. The sensitivity of the touchscreen could undoubtedly be a little higher . It happens every now and then that entries are not accepted on the first attempt. Maybe this could be due to the screen protector. Unfortunately, there are no physical buttons for navigation and the user only has access to on-screen buttons, which are hidden in favor of a larger display area can. The S8 also has a notification LED , which is located right next to the front lightning. To our delight, it does not shine as penetrating as that of the homtome. With the display brightness you can, in our opinion, not completely satisfied . The display is much darker compared to other models. White content appears greyish rather than white. A manual adjustment via MiraVision is unfortunately in vain. This may make it difficult to read display content in sunlight.Granted, that’s already complaining at a higher level. In view of the price you still get a solid display, but also in this price range, there is something better. Here, the S8 is slightly superior to Homtom over Leagoo.

Power

The Leagoo S8 has a middle class SoC and is almost identical to the Homtom S8. Here is also an Octacore MT6750T processor from MediaTek installed. Splitted into 4 power clusters each, the 4 ARM Cortex-A53 cores clock at a maximum of 1.5 GHz. The other 4 clusters clock with a maximum of 1.0 GHz. For graphics applications, a Mali-T860 GPU is also used here. With Leagoo, however, there are only 3 GB of RAM . The Homtom S8 offers 1 GB more RAM.

The data transfer rate of the RAM is not bad. Leagoo is scratching with its S8 at the 4.0 GB per second mark. A doubling compared to the homtome. The total memory is 32 GB, but thanks to the hybrid slot at the expense of the Nano SIM slot expandable. The read and write speed, however, is rather mediocre with lousy 90 MB / s (read) and 103 MB / s (write) . Longer waiting times when executing commands have not been noticed. The system runs very smoothly and multitasking is well known to the S8, Since the hardware is identical to the homtome except for the lower memory, there is no surprise in the benchmark results. The smartphone scores just under 42,000 points in the AnTuTu benchmark. 2600 are in the multi-core, and 605 in the single-core score at Geekbench. For basic tasks, the Leagoo is so well suited and gamblers may confidently enjoy games with slightly higher requirements smoothly . Whether FIFA Mobile or Asphalt 8. Both games were playable on medium graphics without jerks.

Operating system

On the Leagoo S8 is the custom Rome Leagoo OS4.0 based on Android 7.0 . As is usually the case in this price segment, no updates to a higher version can be expected. There are a few changes in the design of this Customs Rom, especially regarding the app icons. A longer touch on the home screen also allows you to quickly download additional themes. There are a variety of different designs or wallpapers. In vain they are too. Everyone will find it. As is often the case with the standard launcher, however, the App Drawer has to be abandoned.

Unfortunately Leagoo did not miss it again and provided her own (useless) App Store in addition to the Google Play Store. Although the malware test was negative, we still recommend disabling the app as all apps can also be installed from the “safe” Google Play Store. Furthermore, buyers of the Leagoo S8 should deactivate the “browser” immediately after setting up the phone, as the security test detected malware here. In addition, the app requires permission to read contacts, access the site, and send SMS. After all, the Google Chrome browser is also installed as standard, as well as the rest of the standard Google Apps.

The size of the font can, as usual, be adjusted variably to your liking in Android. To my delight, however, the font size compared to other smartphones is much lower. So more text fits on the screen. This is very good for reading.

Camera

Quality goes before quantity . Certainly, it sounds very tempting for the customer in advance, when talking about 4 cameras. So far, no dual camera of the smartphones we tested could add value in the lower price segment. As with the BlackviewS8 turns out to be the whole thing as a promotional fake. At the Leagoo, I would not go quite that far, but here, too, the buyer is somewhat deceived. “Bokeh effects” can not be realized with the help of both dual cameras. As so often, no second lens is used here to represent the effect, but again only a typical software filter. However, the Leagoo, the dual cameras really exist and no fake. Nevertheless, they are not a special feature. Leagoo simply splits the cameras. By default, one of the front and back cameras is used for the color shots, while the second is responsible for black and white shots. A comparison for example to the current Honor 9 should be avoided.The monochrome recordings are more on a bad level.

On the back Leagoo installed a Sony IMX258 main camera, which resolves with 13 MP and has an F / 2.2 aperture. This sensor is often used in this price segment. Autofocus works very reliably, quickly and precisely. The images have an average sharpness for this price range, but are a bit blurry in the detail. When using the HDR function actually useful recordings, Without HDR, the images are clearly too dark, but come with strong colors therefore. The second main camera (monochrome images), on the other hand, only resolves at 2 MP. With such a low resolution, you can not expect beautiful pictures. Even at first glance, the low resolution is simply too low to make nice (black and white) shots. Same situation with the second front camera, the photos also only with 2 MP snaps. In this case, some self-made strong textures errors occur. The selfie quality sometimes suffers considerably. If you use the “real” 8 MP front camera, so selfies in color, you can produce quite satisfactory shots.

The following passage is only for women, or for girls of relevance: All shot self-portraits can be “bragged” without much detours. So you can give your own ego a different lipstick, apply more rouge, adjust the eyebrows, add eyeliner / eyeshadow and much more. The amazing thing is how well it actually works. Sure, the selfies look slightly “photoshopped”, but a few good portraits are sure to come with the tools. With the S8 Leagoo even halfway useful slow motion videos can be recorded. The big drawback, however, is the limitation of the resolution of just 640 x 480. Standard videos can be recorded in Full HD. The quality is sufficient.

In summary, one must just ask what this nonsense with the 2 additional cameras should? Dear Leagoo Marketing Team: Surely you have to go with the flow. One might think that those who do not have a dual camera (or more) these days are quickly away from the market. I’m more of an advocate, especially in this price segment to focus on the basics. But these must also be available in good quality. The S8 delivers usable photos with the 13 MP main camera and the 8 MP front camera. The monochrome cameras are there rather wasted space. Capacities could have been invested more expediently here.

Connectivity

The S8 can accommodate 2 SIM cards. Since it is a hybrid slot , when using a memory card, only the micro SIM slot can be used. The Nano SIM card slot also serves as a MicroSD card carrier. The Leagoo can be operated with a maximum memory card of up to 128 GB. The device supports all 2G and 3G and 4G frequencies that are needed for all mobile networks . LTE can be used without restriction and the reception is always very good.

Together with Bluetooth 4.0, the user has numerous sensors available, as in the Homtom. In addition to the basics, such as brightness, acceleration and proximity sensor , also magnetic field sensor , compass, gyroscope and Hall sensor are implemented. Nice to have.

The already mentioned fingerprint ID sensor works perfectly in practice. From 10 attempts my fingerprint was recognized each time directly and the smartphone unlocked. For my feeling that could still go a bit more fixed. It would have been desirable, however, that the user would get a haptic feedback if the fingerprint was recognized or not recognized. There is no negative surprise in terms of call quality, even when using the hands-free function. Many test calls made me very well understood. The interlocutor was also always clearly heard. Disturbing background noise has not occurred to date.

When navigating by car there was no negative experience . The Leagoo S8 always leads me to the goal and the current position was always found correctly; even if initially minor site corrections had to be carried out. However, things are different when navigating on foot. The smartphone is unfortunately unsuitable for this . Although the location and destination are quickly found, the position arrow is shown inaccurate or rotated. As a result, you approach the target almost backwards or sideways. Teilwiese the route is then also below the position arrow and is therefore not visible to the user. A recalibration of the compass in Google Maps did not succeed.

As far as the sound is concerned, the built-in monaural speaker is always sufficient for telephoning, playing and occasionally watching YouTube videos. A sound enjoyment is not that, as the sound is tinny, as so often, but admitted: Who hears his favorite playlist already on the speaker of the phone? For all basic tasks, the speaker is sufficient. When WiFi reception there were no dropouts or complaints. The 802.11a / b / g / n protocols are supported and thanks to Dual Band the smartphone transmits in the 2.4 and 5 GHz range.

Battery

Leagoo’s version of the S8 is equipped with a relatively small battery. Just 2940 mAh measures the energy carrier. For today’s conditions but quite poor. The device lasted for 5 hours in the PC Mark Work Battery Life Test. So power users might have problems getting through the day. If you prefer to pick up your mobile phone occasionally, it will take you a day to run it. The battery is therefore still fine, with users who need a strong battery life, should better resort to another model. After all, thanks to Fast Charge, the S8 has 70% of its capacity available within 60 minutes.

Share this:

Summary

Really against a purchase of Leagoo S8 speaks nothing. However, you have to put up with a few compromises in terms of display and camera. Meanwhile, you can already be happy, if the advertised dual camera is actually available. The Leagoo even has a dual front camera and one on the back. Irritating, however, is the benefit of it. The two additional cameras only resolve with 2 MP and only black and white shots can be taken. These images are neither beautiful, nor do these cameras fulfill any other purpose except the purpose of marketing. The bokeh effect is just another 0815 filter. For normal color shots, however, the smartphone is sufficient. Overall, the price / performance ratio. The good workmanship, the existing SoC for all standard applications and tasks and the support of all important LTE tapes speak in favor of a purchase of the device. It should be noted, however, that the battery is not very persistent.